Cheryl Schuberth
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Westminster, CO, United States
Toptal member since February 16, 2022
Cheryl is a driven Scrum and project management professional who thrives on helping teams move through change. Whether coaching a new team in Scrum or guiding an executive team through organizational change, she respects all experiences and perspectives. Cheryl is always looking to learn from those around her and leverages the collective skills of her teams to help everyone succeed.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Leadership
- Executive Consulting
- Leadership
- People Management
- Planning
- Program Management
- Scrum Coaching
- Scrum Master
Work Experience
Personal Performance Coach
Self-employed
- Coached women entrepreneurs to rethink their priorities, task lists, and routines, so that they can best serve their families and clients.
- Established the LLC, defined the coaching programs, created the brand, executed marketing activities, and made a coaching newsletter.
- Released "Measure, Mix & Marinate: Embracing the Key Ingredients to a More Fulfilling Life," a memoir and personal development book discussing curiosity and personal growth.
Scrum Transition Coach
Dell
- Coached mid-level engineering managers on how their role was changing and how they could best serve the organization and optimize the transition.
- Collaborated with other Scrum coaches and executives to define new organizational practices supporting Scrum rollout in a $3.5+ billion business.
- Coached product and engineering managers into product owner roles and implemented top-down backlog grooming practices to support communication from the executives to the individual Scrum teams.
- Drafted and edited white papers to support role transitions across all participants.
- Coached individual Scrum teams on backlog grooming and story point estimation practices.
- Instructed teams on how to best leverage retrospective findings to improve sprint over sprint.
Director of Program Management
Dell
- Joined EMC as a program manager, then moved through senior program manager, manager, senior manager, and director.
- Appointed to a high-profile project under strict NDA between EMC and one of its businesses, requiring a high level of coordination across the business and executive teams. Launched a product into partner's ecosystem.
- Adopted Scrum on a handful of teams across EMC. Drove knowledge sharing across EMC teams and leveraged best practices to improve our practice.
- Developed a pan-Dell program governance model to align the existing Waterfall model with Scrum delivery and collaborated with the senior Dell executives to ensure appropriate transparency and expectations were set.
- Maintained the program commitments and team morale through Dell/EMC merger by listening to my direct reports and their team members and leveraging relationships throughout the organization to effectively respond to impacts across business functions.
- Collaborated with all functional areas across Dell to understand the implications of a business unit rollout of Scrum on each and implications for program execution and business readiness.
- Managed programs and direct reports across multiple US-based and international locations to ensure business readiness across all teams.
Business Solutions Delivery Manager
PS Technology
- Implemented a project governance process that reduced project losses and improved client relationships.
- Introduced a formal employee review and feedback loop to align leadership expectations and employee goals leading to improvements in employee morale.
- Managed ongoing software improvements in support of changing union agreements to optimize time management and resource planning across various railroad businesses.
Senior Project Manager
Emercent Solutions
- Acted as the on-site relationship and project manager for financial component of a major automaker.
- Drove execution of a loan decisioning system managing engineers, business analysts, QA testers, and customer business partners.
- Led RFP response team and account presentations for new business within the existing and potential clients.
- Oversaw interviews, hiring, reviews, and mentoring of team members on the client site.
Project History
Backup and Recovery for Virtualized Environments
Brought a traditional backup and recovery into the VMWare environment as a native product component, managing teams across companies and delivery models.
Navigated the political landscape between the backup and recovery business unit and VMware under strict NDA, as one of several teams doing business with this internal partner.
I began as a scrum master and program manager and grew to overall program liaison and product owner with three Scrum teams and two scrum masters. Scrum was not common for VMware and our new business structure. I asked VMware for a different lens in structuring the program team and supporting resources and business metrics to achieve success. Although initially unwieldy, persistence enabled us to provide the resources the team needed to meet their commitments and set both organizations up for success.
Scrum Transition
After resigning from my full-time director position, I was asked to stay part-time to drive an organization-wide transition to Scrum for a $3.5 billion business unit as a Scrum coach and mentor.
I worked with the executive team of the business unit to align how Scrum, as defined, would be rolled out and its implications for the organization. I also wrote white papers to describe how managers’ and directors’ roles might evolve to enable the transition, led related discussions with those leaders, and provided coaching as they adjusted. To implement a top-down backlog grooming structure, I demonstrated tie-in to roadmap activities and field communications and engaged products owners to take ownership. With effective collaboration with individual Scrum teams, we refined backlogs and effectively executed retrospectives to continuously improve their execution.
Certifications
Dare to Lead Trained
Dare to Lead Trained
Certified Scrum Professional (CSP)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Zoom, VersionOne, Bugzilla, Slack
Paradigms
Agile Project Management, Agile Leadership, Change Management
Other
Planning, Scrum Coaching, Team Management, Program Management, Team Leadership, Scrum Master, Team Building, Remote Team Leadership, Project Reporting, Writing & Editing, People Management, Executive Consulting, Agile Program Management, Risk Management, Leadership, Requirements & Specifications, Technical Program Management, Dashboards, Entrepreneurship, Project Management, Governance, Client Relationship Management, Product Owner, Communication, Mentorship & Coaching, Request for Proposal (RFP)
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